But it is to the records of the Children's Society that one must go for reliable statistics of the potential criminal, as there the only systematic study of their conditions is made and recorded by one of the greatest neurologists in the country, Dr. Max Schlapp, of New York. As a specialist in nervous diseases he has been connected with the Children's Society and the Children's Court, where he has had wide opportunities for observing the relation between delinquence and mental defectiveness. In cases of viciousness or feeble-mindedness exhaustive studies have been made by Dr. Schlapp. And the extent to which society is daily at the mercy of uncontrolled potential criminality is alarming. "Feeble-minded children and feeble-minded men," says Dr. Schlapp, "are roaming about the streets of New York to-day as free agents. Parents are not compelled by law to put a feeble-minded child in custody. Yet that feeble-minded child unsuspected as such, amiable and care-free as he usually is, is potentially a criminal, and at any moment may commit a crime. That child is permitted to grow up without restraint, except [40] such as the parents exercise, and this has no effect whatever in these cases. The child is allowed to marry and bring forth children of his own kind, more feeble-minded and more dangerous. There is no system designed to pick out from the community persons so afflicted, and no law whatever to prevent their untrammelled movements. "The city street is a recruiting ground for the gangster because it is full of defective children, mental and moral, who are potential criminals. This question has never been seriously considered. When brought under corrective restraint it has hitherto long been the custom to herd all the cases together while serving time. But in 1894 the German Government woke up to the fact that 3 to 7 per cent. of city children and those of isolated rural communities contain the 'moron,' or intellectually defective type, together with the moral imbecile." Investigation showed recently that in a reformatory near Berlin 63 per cent. of the inmates were abnormal, while over 50 per cent. were seriously defective or menaces to society. This has since been shown to exist in all the leading nations--England, France, Italy, where, by the way, the Camorrist type is the equivalent for our New York gangster. In the Elmira Reformatory 38 per cent. are, as a rule, feeble-minded and consist of types that repeat their offense against society or commit some other crime.